LABOUR OPENS.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 223, 20 September 1929, Page 7

LABOUR OPENS.

FEDERAL CAMPAIGN. Vigorous Attack On Government Of Bruce Party. MR. SOULLIN'S POLICY SPEECH. (Australian and N.Z. Press Association.) MELBOURNE, September 19. Mr. J. H. Scullin, Leader of the Opposition in the Federal Parliament, opened the Labour campaign at Richmond this evening. He vigorously defended the arbitration system. The Labour Leader declared, that the Government at tlie last election received a mandate to maintain the arbitration system, not to destroy it. Behind the latest move was an attempt to reduce wages, speed up the workers and lengthen their hours.

Mr. Scullii) also attacked the taxation proposals and the Government's action in withdrawing the prosecution of Mr. John Brown, coalmine owner, on a charge of locking-out miners. Continuing, Mr. Scullin contended that if the Federal Arbitration Court were swept away it would be impossible in inost cases to induce employers to agree to meet their employees in conference round the table and there would be no machinery to compel them to Mr. J. H. Scullin. come together. The clock thus would be put back 25 years. The speaker attacked the Government upon what he termed the alarming condition of the Commonwealth's finances. He said the accumulated surplus of £7,500,000 in hand when the BrucePage administration took office six years ago had been turned into an accumulated deficit of nearly £5,000,000. If finance was a test of good government then God help this Government. A sunt of £2,000,000 had been spent on assisted immigration in the paet four, years. If the Labour party were returned, said Mr. Scullin, this money would be diverted to assisting Australia's unemployed and helping to develop the country.